Sometimes it feels like America tries to create familiarity with the foreign or undefined by relating it to domestic concepts Americans already understand. It’s why we measure hard to picture distances in football fields, why soccer announcers tell us Qatar is the size of Connecticut and why those same announcers can’t help but use the language of football and baseball to contextualize soccer.
Anyone who has been watching the World Cup in the U.S. via Fox Sports has had to witness the abhorrent commentary from their pundit lineup. It’s hard to fully understand why they have to make such a deliberate effort to cover this World Cup as if viewers have never heard of the sport and must have their hands held as they try to grasp this straightforward sport. Maybe the commentators, and the producers that guide them, see soccer as a threat to the dominance of the big three American sports, two of which are losing popularity. But maybe their approach is the way it is because they can’t help but think of this sport, the most global of all, as existing outside American sports culture.
America’s fear of the foreign means anything unfamiliar is often treated in two ways: it must change to fit American culture (assimilation) or it must be taken and made American (appropriation). Soccer doesn’t lend itself well to either of these treatments because it already has global popularity and its context differs so much between nations that it can’t be appropriated. It doesn’t belong to any one nation or culture.
Most soccer countries have had decades — some over a century — to create the soccer culture they espouse. We know what Brazilian soccer is, what the German style is, how the South American and European styles of the sport differ and the ways their nations’ fans express their love of the game and their national teams. It’s an easy-to-define culture because it’s had time to be defined, but also because soccer is the sport that dominates in these nations. Classes are canceled, work ends early, and sometimes holidays are declared just for a game because as a nation, everyone knows that the majority of people will want to watch and interfering with that is a futile denial of reality.
But in the U.S., life goes on. A World Cup happens and a few people might watch but it isn’t alive in the streets, it isn’t a celebration. In other countries I’ve been to, when the national team plays, that’s what the day is about — especially in a tournament as monumental as the World Cup.
It’s a sad thing to know that somewhere else, everyone around you is living this celebration of the game and of each nation in it. It can feel isolating to have to watch at home alone, on a second muted screen, while work duties take priority. But until that soccer culture is born and it overpowers the American work ethic, we are left taking our cues from the likes of Alexi Lalas, Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey. This is the sad part about soccer in America: we largely discuss it on the basis of how it is portrayed by the media. And because soccer for the past month has really been only the World Cup, we can’t help but be disappointed because the English-language American coverage of the Cup has been abysmal (Telemundo has been pretty good, at least as far as the game-time commentary goes).
American soccer culture could probably develop into something completely unique if the media didn’t try to make it more enticing to a general audience by trying to make it familiar. As millions have discovered on their own by waking up early to watch the Premier League, La Liga, Serie A and other leagues, soccer is captivating because it just is. You don’t have to be sold on it, told it’s safe and that it’s similar to other American sports. It isn’t. It’s THE global sport and as such its introduction to a new fan base is an opportunity to create a culture of its own. It doesn’t have to follow the cues of sports media.
And it’s time we let soccer culture develop on its own. People, especially immigrants have brought the excitement for this sport to America and it shows when teams like Mexico play in sold out stadiums. It’s being formed in pick up leagues and the bars that cater to the early morning clientele that, until recently, could likely only afford to watch European soccer at soccer bars.
If anything, we should put more effort into shaping youth soccer talent instead of trying toAmericanize professional soccer coverage. This American men’s national team made it to the round of 16 with a team of privileged suburban kids who had the financial and parental backing to make their way through the expensive U.S. club soccer system and then college. Imagine how good the team will be once poor kids and city kids have the support to develop in the game.